


Girls on Film

by LiquidCaliban



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blackmail, Established Relationship, F/M, luurve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9434963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiquidCaliban/pseuds/LiquidCaliban
Summary: Steve discovers a potentially compromising bit of videography, but he also loves Natasha. Nothing graphic, so don't be disappointed.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: My six hours of sleep over the past four days shall excuse my madness, though I am not convinced I own anything Marvel. 
> 
> Spoilers: Nope. General MCU with no AoU, I guess. 
> 
> Pairing: Established Romanogers because it's basically gravity. 
> 
> Summary: Steve thinks Tony has something compromising on Natasha. He isn't totally wrong. No sexy times. Sorry. (I ain't sorry.)

Steve had noticed that something was off for months between Natasha and Tony. They were getting along – or at least she was making an effort to be nicer to him. Steve liked to think it was due to his positive, teamwork-centric influence; she had softened a little around the edges over the past year since they’d been together, though some of that was also due to the mentoring role she had adopted with the new Avengers. Her new attitude toward Tony seemed to fit in with that dynamic. It didn’t even start to worry him until the night of one Tony’s parties when she acted like his personal waitress for most of the night, bringing him drinks, food and whatever else he asked for with nary a complaint. When Steve had tried to ask her about it midway through the party, she had brushed him off with an anemic line about getting along for the good of the team before rushing off to fetch Tony another Scotch.

Steve had taken the hint and dropped it until they were dropped off by one of Tony’s drivers at their Brooklyn apartment. He nuzzled up behind her as she unlocked the sticky lobby door. “You look beautiful tonight.”

“Flirt once we get inside. It’s freezing out.”

“You could have worn a coat,” he hummed into her hair as he followed her in and enjoyed the view on the stairs on the way up to their floor. Her dark red dress hugged her curves before ending just above her knees, a nod to his more conservative fashion tastes – not that he didn’t like some of the things she wore just for him in the privacy of their home. He took up his position behind her again as she unlocked their door, resting his hands on the flare of her hips. Since they were alone, he whispered into her ear, “I bet you look just as good out of this dress as you do in it.”

“Shameless,” she replied with a grin over her shoulder, pushing in and punching the code into the alarm system.

Maintaining his embrace, he awkwardly segued, “Speaking of stuff that’s shameless, what’s going on with you and Tony?”

“Me and Stark? God, he’s an asshole.” She pulled away from him, kicking her heels off and bending down to pick them up.

He fought to concentrate on his question. “Then why are you being so nice to him lately?”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” He started unbuttoning his shirt as he trailed her into the bedroom. “He called you ‘dollface,’ ‘sweetheart’ and ‘my Russian teddy bear’ tonight and you didn’t even threaten him.”

“Just because he’s a jerk doesn’t mean I have to be. Weren’t you the one who asked me not to respond to annoyance with violence?”

The reply was so un-Natasha-like he almost wanted to ask if she’d sustained a head injury or been drugged. “I suggested you stop setting dangerous booby traps every time he did something to annoy you, not to bend over backwards catering to his every whim and let him call you demeaning names!”

“Good thing you weren’t around when he called me ‘sugar tits,’” she murmured so quietly he almost didn’t hear it.

Unfortunately, serum-enhanced senses meant that he rarely missed out her often snarky asides. He spun around so furiously, the hamper lid came off in his hand, his shirt falling on the floor beside it. “He called you _what_?”

“Don’t worry about it. And don’t wreck our stuff over it.” She slipped out of her dress with a distracting shimmy. “Stark is an idiot, but he’s not stupid. He won’t push it any further.”

“Why are you letting him push you at all? I don’t understand it.”

She shrugged, leaving the bathroom door open as she went in to wash up in only her bra and panties. “Nothing is going to change him, so why get angry about it? It just makes the team weaker if we’re constantly fighting each other. I’m willing to put up with Stark and his nonsense for the good of the team. Shouldn’t you be happy about that?”

“I would if I thought you were being straight with me.” He leaned against the door frame and watched her brush her teeth, fiddling with his belt buckle. “Come on, Nat. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

“Arready dih,” she replied though a mouthful of foamy toothpaste.

He moved to stand behind her, spreading his hands over the warm bare skin of her stomach as he pulled her into his chest. “Please?”

She met his eyes in the mirror for a moment before leaning down to spit into the sink. When she stood up again, she looked serious. She didn’t turn, but held his gaze in the mirror. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that Stark knew something. Something that was best forgotten. Maybe he forgets it if I don’t antagonize him. Hypothetically.”

“You’re telling me that Tony is blackmailing you?”

She looked away, picking up a tube of some kind of cleanser. “Like I said, it’s just a hypothetical.”

“Yeah, you said that several times. Is it something to do with your past? Because you know I don’t care about that stuff.” He held her a little tighter as she scrubbed her face with sweet smelling pink goo. “You are who you are now because you chose to leave that behind.”

“It’s nothing like that. It’s just something I’d prefer not to have out on the internet. Considering what I released with all those SHIELD files…”

He was almost certain it was more than that, but he knew better than to push too hard all at once. “So it’s just something, what, embarrassing?”

“Just think…” she paused as she rinsed her face and wiped a washcloth over it, “think of it like the time Sam performed at that karaoke bar and fell off the stage. It was funny for friends who know him, but not something he’d want the whole world to see, right?”

“Very true.” He pretended to be mollified. “Of course, I’ve heard you sing and I wouldn’t be embarrassed if I sounded like you.”

“Such a charmer. I’m going to reset the security system. Meet you in bed?”

He leaned down to kiss her. “Try and stop me.”

* * *

 

In spite of their active night, Steve had trouble sleeping and woke feeling jittery. He tried to act naturally as he and Natasha ate breakfast together, but she clearly picked up on his uneasiness over pancakes and bacon. “Hey, is everything okay?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t have to run this training mission with Sam today. We can put it off ‘til next week if something’s up.”

“What? No, I just didn’t get much sleep. Somebody couldn’t keep her hands to herself.” He stood quickly and started picking up their plates.

“You say that like I’m the only one.” In spite of the comment, she frowned as she finished her coffee. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Have fun teaching Sam to be a super spy today.” He concentrated on rising syrup from the plates as he heard her get up and pull on her boots. “Is, uh, is Sam gonna get a catsuit?”

“God forbid.” She walked over and pecked his lips. “I’ll be back late, so don’t wait up.”

“No problem. You can wake me up for a late dinner.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Second dinner?”

“Maybe.”

“Giant Hobbit,” she murmured against his lips before kissing him again.

He watched furtively from behind a curtain until she had gotten into her car (they had lucked out the previous day with the ‘primo space’ on the street right in front of the building) and driven off before throwing on his clothes. It was a cold day, but he was sweating under his leather jacket and wool sweater as he sped through traffic on his Harley, weaving between cars the way he hated to see motorcyclists do as he crossed the bridge into Manhattan. He arrived at the Tower in record time.

Tony was in his lab, fiddling with a couple of shiny things when Steve charged in, demanding, “What’ve you got on Natasha?”

“Uh…like, four or five inches and maybe thirty pounds?” Tony gagged when Steve lifted him off his stool by the collar of his shirt. “Okay, thirty-five! Forty?”

“What are you blackmailing her with?” Steve shook him a little more violently than he’d intended. He hadn’t realized how angry he was about the situation until he’d seen Tony sitting there, like threatening Natasha was something that could just be forgotten like it was nothing. Steve shook Tony again, not willing to let him think this was a simple prank between friends. “I’m not gonna ask you again.”

“It’s a sex tape, okay?” Tony squawked, face turning red. “Sex tape!”

Steve dropped him in shock. Whatever he had been expecting, it certainly wasn’t _that_. He knew Natasha had told Sam he would lose some toes if he posted the video he’d taken of her playing with Wanda’s kitten and Clint had plenty of pictures of her with his kids, not that he would think of revealing them to the world, but…a sex tape? A million questions swirled in his mind. How old was it? Was it personal or something involved with her job? For the Red Room? For SHIELD?

“I want to see it.”

Tony was still gasping as he regained his normal color. “What? Why?”

It was a good question. Steve had surprised himself with the demand and wasn’t sure why he wanted to see the tape; it would only hurt to see Natasha with another man, even before she had even known him. She had been honest about her history when they had first started dating, so he couldn’t claim complete ignorance. She was amazing in bed, not just because he loved her, but because she’d had…practice. It would be embarrassing to have a sex tape out in the world, naturally, but he’d seen the fake lingerie modelling pictures that had been part of her cover when she’d infiltrated Stark Industries, released with the SHIELD file dump. She had also told him that she had used sex and seduction as part of her job and even a way to stay alive when she was with the KGB. Whatever was on that tape couldn’t be a threat to her now, could it?

Steve realized he didn’t want to see as much as he wanted to find out what was so bad about it that she was letting Tony get under her skin. The reason was on that tape. He steeled his nerves and growled, “Stark…”

“You’re the boss, Cap.” Tony tapped a few commands into a keyboard and pointed to the screen beside Steve. “Enjoy.”

Steve bit back a reply as the video began. A stationary camera focused on the bed in what looked an empty hotel room through a window. It actually seemed familiar. He vaguely remembered a similar room when they were in…

Recognition hit him like a thunderbolt. Prague. Hotel Pod Vezi. They had just completed a mission there and she had taken him to the hotel for the night before their flight left the next day. She’d said they deserved a nice room after nearly a week in a chilly observation hideout. They had showered together. She had put on a dress and they had gone to dinner at a nice quiet restaurant. They had made love in that bed.

She had brought him back to the site of a previous mission, a previous _conquest_.

He was almost boiling over with anger when she appeared in the frame, wearing a little black dress, hair arranged in tight curls. God, she had looked just like that when they had been there together. No wonder she’d been willing to bow down to Tony’s demands! This was so beyond the pale he couldn’t even…

His fist was tightly balled in readiness to punch out the monitor when he saw the man enter the frame. A second emotional thunderbolt struck when he realized he was watching himself. He slipped his arms around Natasha’s waist with a smile. She turned and kissed him. As he lowered the zipper on her dress in the video, he pressed the stop button in real life. All his anger bled away, replaced by confusion. Someone had recorded their night six months ago at the hotel in Prague. It was a gross invasion of privacy, that was for damn sure, but that was no reason to kowtow to Tony. This couldn’t be the whole story. He gestured toward the screen. “This is it?”

“That’s it. Bring back memories?”

Steve stayed focused. “You don’t have any other compromising information or video or whatever?”

“Nope. Wait, did you think I had video of Natalie doin’ it with some other guy?”

“Yes! I mean, not recently, but I thought you were…threatening to break us up or post it on the Internet or something.”

“I would never. You really think that little of me?”

“Tony, you’re blackmailing my girlfriend.”

“Oh.” He stroked his goatee. “To be fair, she was the one who suggested that she could be a little nicer to me if I promised not to tell you I had this.”

“But why?”

Tony shrugged. “She didn’t exactly offer an explanation. It was more like she held a knife to my throat while she threatened to kill me if I ever told you about this.”

“This doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ve found that women usually don’t.”

Steve ran his hand through his hair. “Try talking with them. Most people make sense if you engage them in conversation.”

“Sounds like a lot of effort. Hey, you wanna grab lunch? I heard about this killer Korean barbeque in…hey, where you goin’?”

“Delete that.” Steve didn’t turn around, heading directly down to his Harley in the Tower garage. He rode aimlessly around the city until he was nearly out of gas before heading home as the sun was setting.

* * *

 

Steve paced around the apartment, waiting for Natasha to get home. He had debated setting up a candlelit dinner, but there wasn’t anything in the refrigerator that seemed worth cooking along with the gesture and he didn’t know when she would be home so he couldn’t run to the store and…

He sat down on the sofa. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to have a nice date night (not that he wanted to have a fight, either) after what he’d learned today. Someone had filmed them making love and she knew about it. She had hidden the recording’s existence from him for months, sucking up to Tony to ensure his silence. It wasn’t as if Steve and Natasha’s relationship was a secret; their friends had been aware of it almost from the beginning and they had made an announcement to the media several months later when a fired staffer from Avengers’ HQ had threatened a leak about it, among other things. Considering how long they had been in a relationship in a 21st century context, it would have been stranger if they weren’t sleeping together. The more Steve thought about it, the more he was convinced that there was no reason she should have been embarrassed about that video unless she was embarrassed about being with _him_. That hurt even more than the thought of seeing her on video with another man.

He had started pacing again when he heard a key click in the lock. She walked in and turned to the alarm keypad, saying only, “Hey.”

“Hi,” he replied cautiously.

She didn’t give him a chance to gather his thoughts, as if he hadn’t been trying to do that all day. “Look, I just came from the Tower, so I know you know about…”

“Why?” he interrupted, emotions rushing to the forefront. “Why were you so desperate that I not find out about it?”

“I’m sorry.” She hung her head as her shoulders slumped forward. Her voice was very small when she said, “I thought you would be embarrassed.”

He had to take a moment to process the statement and still found himself confused. “You thought I would be embarrassed?”

“That Stark had a video of us having sex. That he’d watched it.”

“Well, I am. A little. But that’s nothing compared to what you’ve been putting yourself through the past few months just to make sure I didn’t find out about it.” The hurt welled up in his chest again. “Am I doing something wrong when we make love? Is that what you don’t want anyone to know?”

“Steve, no.” She took his face between her hands, stopping him from looking away. “You are amazing, okay? Every time you touch me, it’s like fireworks go off. I love you. You know I love you, right?”

He tried not to melt into the feel of her hands on his unshaved cheeks. “I love you, too, Nat, but I just…”

“I didn’t want you to feel like you were out on display, alright?” Her speech was uncharacteristically rushed. “You still blush when Stark makes a comment about us going home together. I thought if you knew he’d seen a video of us making love it might make you feel compromised. Or you’d worry he’d let the rest of the team see it and use that to undermine your leadership or…” Her breathing sounded shaky. “Stark is the only person who has a copy of that video. He said he was doing some data mining and found it on a Slovak arms dealer’s hard drive. He had FRIDAY scrub everything on it out of existence before he even told me he had it.”

“And then he blackmailed you with it.”

“No. He…he was actually going to give it to us. He thought it would be a hilarious Valentine’s Day gift or something.”

“Why would he get us a Valentine’s…sorry, this is just so strange.” He swore he could see tears threating in her eyes, so he pulled her into a hug. “You really did this just to save me a little embarrassment?”

Her breath was warm against his chest as she replied, “I didn’t want you to feel violated.”

“So you let Tony treat you like crap for a few months? Nat, sparing my feelings isn’t worth trashing yours.”

“It is to me.”

He sighed because he couldn’t find the right words and squeezed her a little tighter. “Can I fix this?”

“You don’t have to do anything. I obviously screwed up here.” She pulled away from his embrace. “I should have known you would handle this like an adult. You’ve always been better at this relationship thing.”

He took the small smile she offered him and raised the mood further with a joke. “Are you admitting I do something better than you?”

“Like that’s such a big deal? Now you’ve got two things you’re better at than I am – relationships and ultimate Frisbee.” Her smile grew wider and an amorous glint appeared in her eyes, making his knees go weak. He could feel her nails against the fabric of his shirt as she ran them down his chest to his beltline. “Well…three, actually.”

He hoped he had the right idea because he was definitely feeling the urge to drag her to bed. “What’s the third?”

“Oh, I think you know.”

He didn’t fight the urge any further.

* * *

 

(Steve wasn’t entirely surprised when a small box containing a flash drive was delivered to their apartment on February 14th. The note read, ‘Thought you might enjoy the last copy.’ He kept it, but they never watched it, preferring the live version.)


End file.
